Are Streets The Only Option for the Homeless?

Seeing people sleeping on the streets is a common site particularly in urban roads of Colombo. These people receive no attention of most by passers. In case if Police officers come across a person sleeping or begging in streets, they could be arrested according to the vagrants act. 


Thinking about the street dwellers, many questions came to my mind, for which I do not have proper answers-

• Why do a person make the road his/ her dwelling?
• Isn’t it because he or she doesn’t have any other place to call his or her own?
• Is he or she committing a criminal act by sleeping on the streets?
• Does every human being like to live a life of dignity, where he or she could fulfil basic needs?
• Is it because he or she cannot afford a place of living, that he or she opts to be in the streets?
• Or is living on the streets the chosen way of life of those people?
• If the people living and sleeping on streets have opted by choice or as a result of poverty, are they reasons to criminalise them and to punish them?
• Shouldn’t the State have a rehabilitation plan rather than criminalizing the homeless?
• If the state is planning to adopt rehabilitative measures or punitive measures isn’t it the duty of the state to consult the people before making decisions?